"Il fait le bien sans espoir de recompense, il est plus vertueux,
plus desinteresse que nous." There are many recorded instances
of Holbach's gracious benevolence. As he said to Helvetius,
"Vous etes brouille avec tous ceux que vous avez oblige, mais j'ai
garde tous mes amis." Holbach had the faculty of attaching people
to him. Diderot tells how at the Salon of 1753 after Holbach had
bought Oudry's famous picture, all the collectors who had passed it
by came to him and offered him twice what he paid for it. Holbach
went to find the artist to ask him permission to cede the picture
to his profit, but Oudry refused, saying that he was only too happy
that his best work belonged to the man who was the first to appreciate
it. Instances of Holbach's liberality to Kohant, a poor musician,
and to Suard, a poor literary man, are to be found in the pages of
Diderot and Meister, and his constant generosity to his friends is
a commonplace in their Memoirs and Correspondence. Only Rousseau was
ungrateful enough to complain that Holbach's free-handed gifts insulted
his poverty. His kindness to Lagrange, a young literary man whom he
rescued from want, has been well told by M. Naigeon in the preface to
the works of Lagrange (p. xviii).

But perhaps the most touching instances of Holbach's benevolence
are his relations with the peasants of Contrexeville, one of which
was published in the _Journal de Lecture_, 1775, the other in an
anonymous letter to the _Journal de Paris_, Feb. 12, 1789. The
first concerns the reconciliation of two old peasants who, not
wanting to go to court, brought their differences to their respected
friend for a settlement. Nothing is more simple and beautiful than
this homely tale as told in a letter of Holbach's to a friend of his.
The second, which John Wilkes said ought to be written in letters of
gold, deserves to be reproduced as a whole.